


let me shed some light

by defcontwo



Series: won't let this city destroy our love [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Recreational Drug Use, loser boyfriends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-14
Updated: 2014-08-14
Packaged: 2018-02-13 02:54:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2134437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/defcontwo/pseuds/defcontwo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is one year and two months since Bucky came back to him when they kiss for the first time, again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	let me shed some light

The world remembers Bucky like this: 

Hunched shoulders. Neat uniform. A rifle slung across his back and a thousand mile stare.

It wasn’t any of the propaganda efforts, in the end, that stuck around, that became the face of the legendary sniper, Sergeant James Barnes.

No, the photograph that wound up splashed across textbooks and museum exhibits was taken off the cuff one day when they were all lounging around, sharing cigarettes and bad jokes, by a young nurse with an art habit. She was gonna go to art school after the war, she told Steve, whether her parents liked it or not. 

She didn’t go to art school, it turns out, but her photos made her famous anyways. 

That Bucky was the Bucky of the war, the Bucky who wore black circles under his eyes like he wore the neat blue coat he donned every morning, that Bucky who was just a touch too wary, too rough around the edges. James Barnes, pared down to his basic parts and put through hell. 

It is the last Bucky that Steve knew but it is not the Bucky he remembers. 

Steve remembers Bucky like this: 

Loud, open, expressive. Neat, slicked back hair and smart suits that he always made a point to save up for. Bucky was always putting in for things like that. He liked to go out dancing, liked to save up for suits that made him look sharp and charming, like a hero from a movie. 

Sometimes he’d make a point to go back after and buy the fancy art supplies that Steve always forced himself to look away from in the store. _Just ‘cause we’re poor doesn’t mean we gotta be miserable, Rogers,_ he’d say, _our lives are miserable enough without us adding to it._

Bucky, who was always the first to start whistling a tune when they were marching through snow and mud and aching in every conceivable place that a human being could ache. Bucky, who traded and hoarded gear and cigarettes in equal measure and was always able to get you the right thing at the right time just when you needed it the most. 

Bucky, who’d pull him aside when things got ugly and bloody and mean and thread his fingers through Steve’s hair and pull him close and whisper meaningless, terrible and cheesy jokes until Steve felt like maybe he could smile again. 

.

Late one night in the bed of a pickup truck, bone-tired and bored and curled up on top of two open sleeping bags, Sam tilted his head up at Steve, a smile crinkling around his eyes and asked him: all right, well, how did it start? 

Steve shrugged. Said it wasn’t really that great of a story. Just a beginning, like any other. 

Tell me anyway, Sam said. _It’ll do you good to tell it_ , Sam didn’t say, but he was right, anyways. 

So for the record, it started like this: 

A Friday night, a queer bar, a crowded dance floor. 

It was the summer of ‘35, Steve was seventeen and Bucky was eighteen. And the two of them, well, they were out for a night on the town. 

Steve’s ma was on a late shift at the hospital and Bucky snuck out his bedroom window, shimmying down the fire escape to get to the bottom. Steve, in his best clothes which were a little worn and a little loose on them but served the purpose just fine and Bucky in his Saturday best. 

But here’s the important part, the part that some seventy something years later, will cause Sam Wilson to smile and shake his head. It’s a good part, if a bit ridiculous, a bit too much like a romance novel. 

They weren’t at the bar together. 

Steve, too warm and out of place in the crowded room, was just about to slip out the front door when he walked headlong into Bucky, who was on his way in. Steve recalls to Sam how they’d stared at each other for a second, a minute, wary and hopeful, before breaking out into nervous laughter, Bucky raising a hand to cup Steve’s shoulder, reeling him in. 

“You sure you’re old enough to be in a bar, Rogers?”

Steve had rolled his eyes, elbowing Bucky in the gut. 

They found a quiet corner and holed up in it all night, drinking and talking and laughing and at the end of it, Steve geared up seventeen years of damn fool courage and crossed the already scant distance between them to kiss Bucky for the first time. Steve recalls how Bucky had surged forward, a stray elbow knocking over his beer glass and how they’d both laughed, nervous and tipsy and too giddy with it by far. Steve had called him a clumsy asshole before kissing him again and again until they drew wolf whistles from some of the other bar goers. 

It’s a good story, Sam said. 

Yeah, I guess you’re right, Steve said. 

Above them, a starless sky loomed dark and large and overwhelming and they were far from the end of their journey but in that moment, it didn’t feel quite so vast. 

. 

This is Bucky, as he is: 

He is a little quieter, now. He doesn’t talk with his hands so much, anymore, but when he does, it’s with small, sharp movements that make him a little shy, a little embarrassed to have such an obvious tell. 

He moves with purpose, with a sort of forced stillness that distills itself into a cat-like grace. He smiles less but when he does smile, it’s like the sun coming up after so many weeks of grey, it’s that goddamn beautiful.

Steve is a sap for this man. He accepts this as fact. It is one of the base truths of his universe. 

Bucky is equal parts baffled and enthused by clothes in the 21st century. The first time Sam tried to explain to him that people spend a lot of money on clothes that make them look like they’re poor, Bucky had stopped and stared and thrown his hands up in the air, going outside for a cigarette. 

One day, Sam and Bucky return from a trip to Georgetown laden down with oxford shirts and cabled sweaters and plans to pay a visit to Sam’s favorite tailor. 

“So it’s not just a Depression Era thing, huh? It’s a you thing, Rogers, you giant fucking liar,” Sam says, and Steve’s pretty sure that he did not ask for the two of them to gang up against him but that’s definitely what’s happening here. 

Bucky, who is busy sorting through his bags, snorts loudly. “Steve isn’t very good at the whole, doing things for himself thing, I don’t know if you picked up on that.” 

“Gee, you know, I never would’ve guessed,” Sam says, voice high and thick with sarcasm. 

“You two are hilarious,” Steve says dryly, throwing his pencil at Sam’s head. Sam ducks it with ease and Bucky catches it right out of the air before tossing it right back at Steve, hitting him in the nose. 

Bucky, as he is, is still kind of a massive jerk. 

Steve wouldn’t have him any other way. 

. 

It is one year and two months since Bucky came back to him when they kiss for the first time, again. 

The wrought iron balcony attached to Jane’s apartment in Adams Morgan groans ominously between their combined weight, clustered as they are close together, knees knocking into each other with the way they’re seated, cross-legged. You’d think they’d be a bit smarter about heights by now, between the two of them, but anyways, Jane’s place is only two stories up and it’d barely be any kind of fall at all. 

Inside, there’s a loud, sharp shriek and Steve cranes his head just in time to see Darcy take a running tackle at Jane and pin her to the sofa to tickle her, trapping Sam beneath the two of them, while Thor watches over them as if he’s not quite sure which side he wants to take. 

They are all so, _so_ high because Darcy decided that smoking pot with Captain America and Thor was on her bucket list, and Steve could only feign disapproval for half a second before giving in, and then Darcy was sending out a mass text titled DC AVENGERS ASSEMBLE and then a follow up text with, _Sorry, Sharon, I’m pretty sure this is a no-go plan for government agents, byob or something_. 

Steve drew the line at taking selfies, though. The media furor at his coming out was enough, he’s pretty sure he doesn’t need to add Captain America has a drug problem to the mix. Fox News would have a fucking field day. 

“This doin’ anything for you?” Bucky asks, holding out the spliff that they made off with on their way out to the balcony. 

“Nope. You?” 

Bucky looks at the spliff sadly before setting it down. “Fucking Nazis.” 

Steve knocks his knee into Bucky’s deliberately. “What, my shining personality not enough for you, Buck?” 

“Nope,” Bucky says, popping the p, knocking his knee back just as hard. “I gotta put up with you all of the time now and sober to boot, it’s awful.” 

“Asshole.”

“That’s me,” Bucky says, a low sort of precious half-smile stealing across his face. “Hey, Steve?” 

“Yeah?”

“Do you ever, uh. Do you ever miss...us?” 

Steve freezes, knuckles turning white from how hard he’s gripping the edge of the balcony. He’s afraid of saying the wrong thing because they’ve just -- they’ve just found a new balance, now, figured out where they’re headed and how to move forward, how to heal and grow and let themselves be young idiots sometimes and sure, he wakes up every morning wishing that Bucky’s right there beside him but he just figured, this wasn’t about what he wanted, not really. 

They loved each other as best they could, seventy odd years and so many wars ago, and they loved others just as well and here they are on the other side and Steve’s become comfortable with the thought that maybe this new Bucky, this Bucky who has come out the other side of so much hell, this Bucky doesn’t want him the way he used to and maybe one day, that’ll be okay. 

Steve swallows hard. 

The thing is -- the thing is, they were never anything but unfailingly honest with each other their whole goddamn lives. It’d be wrong of him, a grave betrayal of everything they’ve ever built, to stop now. 

“All of the time,” Steve admits. 

“Hey,” Bucky says. He lifts a hand up, fingers pressing lightly into skin, turning Steve to face towards him. “Me too, pal,” Bucky says, cupping Steve’s jaw and bringing their lips together in a soft, dry barely-there kiss before moving back. 

Steve opens his mouth to -- to apologize, maybe, although for what, he doesn’t know, or to blurt out something sappy and embarrassingly honest but Bucky stops him with a shake of his head. 

“I know, pal,” Bucky says. “It was my turn to be the brave one, huh?” 

Steve smiles crookedly. “Guess so.” 

. 

Steve slams the door shut behind him, placing his tablet and his keys on the kitchen table. There was a whole, long drawn out kerfluffle with Congress this week about a national security bill related to the HYDRA mess and on top of that, his graphic design class at the local community college ran a little late and all he really wants to do is curl in front of the TV with a couple of pizzas. 

Maybe take a long, hot shower and contemplate retiring for the rest of his life. 

“Buck?”

“In here,” Bucky’s voice rings out from the direction of the bathroom. Steve makes his way over there, one hand idly rubbing at a sore knot in his neck. 

The bathroom door is wide open, which is either an expression of trust or paranoia, maybe both, and when Steve leans against the doorjamb, he finds Bucky in the bathtub, with a full ashtray by the window and a bottle of wine, open and sitting next to the tub. 

The water is white and murky from soap but Steve can see the way it clings to Bucky’s skin, can see the way the water dips and rises as he moves, the fine contrast of metal on porcelain making a surprisingly lovely picture that Steve suddenly aches to sketch out the old fashioned way, with charcoal on paper. 

“Are you drinking the 40 dollar bottle of wine that Sharon gave us straight from the bottle?”

Bucky lifts up the bottle, soap coating the outside of the glass, and takes a sip, red tinting the edges of his lips. “Why, you think she’d disapprove?”

Steve shrugs. “Nah, probably not. It’s just, you know. The principle of the thing.”

Bucky huffs, reaching down to flick a soap bubble in Steve’s direction. “Shut the fuck up and get in the tub, Rogers.” 

Steve pulls at the hem of his t-shirt, pointedly ignoring the heavy, intent look that Bucky’s fixed him with, for all that just the thought of it sends all his blood rushing south. 

“You know, I was hoping for a quiet, easy evening, Barnes,” Steve says as he quickly sheds his clothing, tossing it to the side. 

“Yeah, I’ll bet,” Bucky says. “Were you gonna eat some pizza, maybe pass out in your armchair watching the ball game, grandpa?”

“Nah,” Steve says, easing one foot into the tub. “I was thinking maybe some NPR.” 

“We can still do that. You know,” Bucky says, pushing at Steve with his foot. “After.” 

“Good plan. Whatever would I do without you, Buck,” Steve says, all smirk and mouth like he’s still five foot four and made up entirely of guts and attitude, pushing Bucky right back and reaching for the bottle of wine. 

“Be sad as shit, probably.”

“Yeah, probably.”

**Author's Note:**

> Jane Foster starts her own scientific research think tank in DC or something, HANDWAVES, shhhh.


End file.
